Ch. 16: Going Narrow Beat Going Big

Ch. 16: Going Narrow Beat Going Big

My mistake on site one was breadth. "Home and garden" — I covered lawns, kitchens, paint, tools, plants. 80 posts, scattered, never owning anything. Ranked page 2 for most.

Site two I went almost absurdly narrow: only raised-bed gardening. Not gardening. Raised beds. Soil mixes, cedar vs galvanized, depth for specific crops, drip irrigation for beds. 45 posts, all one subtopic.

The difference was night and day. Google clearly read me as a specialist — I'd publish a new raised-bed post and it'd rank top 5 within three weeks, riding the domain's concentrated relevance. Site one's posts took months and topped out on page 2.

Month 9: the narrow site hit 19k sessions on 45 posts; the broad site still sat at 14k on 80.

Lesson banked: depth in a tiny topic compounds faster than breadth across a big one. Own a pond, don't sprinkle the ocean.